Thanks .. I will hunt the forums re the blu ray / HD issue - I think it is a matter of implementing the H.264 codecs but I am certainly no guru - everyone I know wants a media center with blu ray playback and whilst MSFT is capable MCE is not so I reckon this is needs to be addressed.

In your reply you stated "NO" I assume it's "NO" to both the blu ray question & my 0810 query.

Thanks .. I will hunt the forums re the blu ray / HD issue - I think it is a matter of implementing the H.264 codecs but I am certainly no guru - everyone I know wants a media center with blu ray playback and whilst MSFT is capable MCE is not so I reckon this is needs to be addressed.

In your reply you stated "NO" I assume it's "NO" to both the blu ray question & my 0810 query.

Cheers

There is no LMCE0810 in the near future.I won´t indicate any dates. It will just start a bunch of speculations.We have to resolve several issues before we even get it to compile correct.

The more help we get the sooner the release.Remember, we do not have any commerical sponsors behind us. Only the community.

Regarding h.264 the problem in many cases is that GPU manufacturers do not release complete drivers for Linux.They lack a lot of high-end functionality, like h.264 gpu support.However nVidia have cuda support in their Linux driver since a while back.It might be a way to use the gpu to offload software codecs. But someone need to code it.

There are a couple of guys on the forum that have tried "core avc". Basically a h.264 software codec.Search the forum for it.

0810 Kubuntu/Ubuntu/etc is on the horizon (by definition, 08 means 2008, 10 means October), however this says nothing about LMCE, until it is accepted into the Kubuntu tree, it will always be a case of them (Ubuntu guys) releasing the new OS first and then the LMCE guys scrambling to generate a new LMCE that will build and run on it. But I understand that the ultimate aim is to combine is as a standard option so that LMCE will come out with the new versions of the OS at the same time....

LMCE is entirely capable of h264, the codec is not the issue. There are 2 main issues for BD/HDDVD - first decoding hi-def H264 (lower resolutions, etc are fine), theoretically it should be able to do it with enough CPU grunt, but as Rodercot and others have pointed out, this seems to be a problem, second is the more critical for BD/HDDVD particularly - encryption, specifically HDCP which is an encryption scheme that encrypts the content from the surface of the disk right through to the playback display/amp. So the devices in between need to be able to intercept and handle this to do all the wonderful media centre things. Currently this is difficult, and yes M$ has deliberately muddied the waters and used DRM to its own advantage making it difficult for other players to get into that market. Moreover, for open source, because there is no overriding commercial entity to pay for access to, and licensing of the HDCP encryption technology it is very difficult. The DRM world is simply not interested in dealing with the open source world.

At the moment, the only support is for LMCE (0710 onwards) to rip the disk to the harddrive, then use a decryption library (illegal in most places!) to pass the content through by stripping the encryption off.

And to niz's point, clearly commercial graphics hardware companies releasing proper open source (or even proprietary) video drivers that allow access to hardware H264 decryption would solve many of Rodercot's issues! In fact they have absolutely NO legitimate commercial excuse for not releasing at least proprietary drivers! There is no more risk to them than any other platform, and we have damn well paid for their hardware, we should be allowed to make use of it!

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rodercot

Just to add to this thread. CoreAVC will only do MKV container playback at this point. Not .ts files or m2ts for that matter. I am using Xbmc through a hardy install for Bd and hd rip playback. I have added to the hybrid as a device called Silverstone - M16 and on the UI I called the media scenario XBMC. It plays black both my HD-DVD to .mkv and BD to .ts files all just fine with original audio either .AC3 or .DTS

All this aside, encryption etc, with the disk ripped to the server as a mkv or m2ts or ts file, the code for playback needs to be fixed so that xine knows to launch Mplayer for playback of these files without having an .m2ts or .evo extension and I am not sure of the current svn state of Mplayer but the version LMCE is using will not playback mkv or ts at 1920 x 1080p 60 the way it is. I have tried countless methods to make this work inside LMCE or KDE. I can either get sound with no video or BAD choppy video and no sound.

I may have misunderstood, but what are you using to actually rip the BD movies off the disk? As far as I know there is no reliable way to rip all BD movies in Linux. As it happens, I have a blu-ray drive and the one blu-ray movie I bought to test with cannot, to the best of my knowledge, be ripped under Linux.

Personally, I'd be satisfied if I could rip the movies on my Linux desktop, then transcode them into a broadcast quality 720p size. Much smaller file than native BD, but still much better quality than DVD and from everything I've read you wouldn't notice the lower quality on all but the newest and 50+ inch 1080p tvs, side by side examination aside. 720p broadcast quality would also be easier to play. This should eliminate the playback issue for me, but I'm still faced with the inability to actually get the movie I paid for off the disk and into lmce.

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rodercot

The only program I know of is Anydvd-HD and windows XP sp2. Then txmuxer for BD and eac for HD-dvd. The new version of AnyDVD-HD says it will actually rip to an .iso or .dvd. This is all for within M$ not Linux.

The more help we get the sooner the release.Remember, we do not have any commerical sponsors behind us. Only the community.

If someone could reply to the topic I posted in the Developers Forum a week ago, "Working Build Process?" this community would have at least one more developer who could help.

The build process described in the overlapping (and evidently erroneous) wiki articles "Building From Source" and "Setting Up A Development Environment" fails when trying to build a module of it, and any of the current developers (or anyone else) who can fix those instructions will remove the roadblock for at least me, and probably others who'd like to help get us all to the next release of LinuxMCE.

If you know how to build from the current sources, please reply to that message, or somewhere else I (and others) can see how to do it.

The only program I know of is Anydvd-HD and windows XP sp2. Then txmuxer for BD and eac for HD-dvd. The new version of AnyDVD-HD says it will actually rip to an .iso or .dvd. This is all for within M$ not Linux.

Dave

That's what I've heard. Any idea if it works in a VM such as virtualbox?

Mediaengineer - I would love that too as I'm new and struggling. However, I think the instructions broke due to the differences in the 2 source trees that the devs are working on merging, and I guess that the thought is there isn't much point correcting them until the merge is complete, presumably because there will be a new set of instructions at that point. From what I have gathered, the merging has been torturous and long winded, but is pretty close (anecdotally).

rodercot

The only program I know of is Anydvd-HD and windows XP sp2. Then txmuxer for BD and eac for HD-dvd. The new version of AnyDVD-HD says it will actually rip to an .iso or .dvd. This is all for within M$ not Linux.

Dave

That's what I've heard. Any idea if it works in a VM such as virtualbox?

Well I have tried with Wine in Hardy and it was a no go. I have not tried with a VM. It works just fine under windows and I can rip and remaster there and just transfer to the server when completed.

Domotiqa : yep been there done that with no luck. As I said there are several series of threads in the forums talking about the issues and we know they are there We need a stable build of Mplayer within LMCE and also knows when we click play on an HD file Whatever it may be.